Certain delicate fabrics are not suitable for conventional in-home immersion cleaning processes. Home washing machines, which provide excellent cleaning results for the majority of fabrics used in today's society, can, under certain conditions, shrink or otherwise damage silk, linen, wool and other delicate fabrics. Consumers typically have their delicate fabric items “dry-cleaned”. Unfortunately, dry-cleaning usually involves immersing the fabrics in various hydrocarbon and halocarbon solvents that require special handling and must be reclaimed, making the process unsuitable for in-home use. Hence, dry-cleaning has traditionally been restricted to commercial establishments making it less convenient and more costly than in-home laundering processes. But, excluding cost and convenience, dry-cleaning processes remain generally superior to in-home, immersion laundering processes for minimizing fabric shrinkage.
Attempts have been made to provide in-home dry-cleaning systems that combine the fabric cleaning and refreshing of in-home, immersion laundering processes with the fabric care benefits of dry-cleaning processes. One such in-home system for cleaning and refreshing garments comprises a substrate sheet containing various liquid or gelled cleaning agents, and a plastic bag. The garments are placed in the sheet, and then tumbled in a conventional clothes dryer. In a current commercial embodiment, multiple single-use flat sheets comprising a cleaning/refreshing agent and a single multi-use plastic bag are provided in a package. Unfortunately, such in-home processes are sub-optimal with respect to fabric shrinkage. To be clear, these in-home, non-immersion processes are substantially superior to in-home, immersion processes with respect to minimizing fabric shrinkage. And these in-home, non-immersion processes are similar to commercial dry-cleaning processes with respect to minimizing fabric shrinkage, but some minor amount of shrinkage can occur as a result of either process. Thus, there is a continuing need to find improved in-home, non-immersion cleaning and refreshing processes, and cleaning and refreshing compositions for use therein, which provide acceptable cleaning while minimizing fabric shrinkage.
It has now also been unexpectedly discovered that certain organic compounds when used with a cleaning/refreshment composition within defined ratios, can reduce the amount of shrinkage that occurs during an in-home, non-immersion cleaning/refreshment process. The present invention provides such a composition, and when used in the processes of this invention, and with the kits of this invention, fabrics can be cleaned and refreshed with substantially less shrinkage than conventional in-home immersion laundering processes. When using the composition, processes and kits of this invention the fabric shrinkage levels are comparable to, and in some cases substantially better than, commercial dry-cleaning with a solvent immersion process.